Good grief.Grief * Andrew Holleran Andrew Holleran is the pseudonym of Eric Garber (born 1944), a novelist, essayist, and short story writer. He is a prominent novelist of post-Stonewall gay literature. He was a member of the Violet Quill, a gay writer's group that met briefly from 1980-81. * Hyperion * $19.95 A book called Grief doesn't scream "beach reading," but anything from Andrew Holleran (Dancer From the Dance Dancer from the Dance is a 1978 novel by Andrew Holleran about gay men in New York City, United States. Plot summary The novel revolves around two main characters: Anthony Malone, a young man from the Midwest who leaves behind his "straight" life as a lawyer to immerse , Ground Zero, The Beauty of Men) demands our attention. Grief, despite its modest length, is a major work, comparable to Joan Didion's National Book Award--winning The Year of Magical Thinking magical thinking Psychology Dereitic thinking, similar to a normal stage of childhood development, in which thoughts, words or actions assume a magical power, and are able to prevent or cause events to happen without a physical action occurring; a conviction that and Christopher Isherwood's slim masterpiece A Single Man. The 50-something narrator NARRATOR. A pleader who draws narrs serviens narrator, a sergeant at law. Fleta, 1. 2, c. 37. Obsolete. , who has cared for his mother during her long stay in a Florida nursing home, accepts a teaching position in Washington, D.C., to escape the land of her death. But grief travels, and Holleran has beautifully captured its essence. The novel is not without humor, to be sure. The narrators landlord, a mid-level government attorney, places retro [Latin, Back; backward; behind.] A prefix used to designate a prior condition or time. personal ads in gay newspapers, halfheartedly seeking love, but he is, like the narrator, "now a sort of homosexual emeritus." Woven into the narrative is a profound historical grief: The narrator spends the semester reading the letters of Mary Todd Lincoln. Her nearly 20 years of mourning add a texture and subtlety to our narrators emotional landscape. Add to that the walking tour of D.C. that pervades the story, and you have an intellectually and emotionally satisfying meditation on aging, loss, love, and American history. Maybe not for the beach but certainly not to be missed. |
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